::Paranormal and Contemporary Romance::

E Is For Edits

For the Blogging From A to Z Challenge I’m doing you all a huge favor and filling you in on the 26 Things To Hate About Writing.** I’m hoping by the end of April, I will have convinced all of you not to indulge in the wild insanity of becoming a writer. If I can save even one person from offering themselves up in sacrifice to the mad and fickle word gods, I will have done some good in this world.

EDITS

Let’s face it: the worst thing about writing is rewriting and editing. It’s like, I already did this once, now I have to go back and fix all my mistakes, make sure the story flows, and that there’s no plot holes or inconsistencies? What kind of masochist do you think I am? I already put up with this awful story this long, now you want me to invest more time polishing it up and making it perfect?

Unfortunately, there’s these awful creatures called ‘editors’ and they seem to believe that you can’t do anything right the first time, like they’re sooooo much smarter than you. If you write a book and expect to publish it, they’re going to make you fix it up, and here’s the awful things you’re going to find when you look at that terrible steaming heap of story you chose to write against all my warnings:

– You thought you connected point A to point B, only to find you veered so far off the path you somehow ended up in the next state over at a rural county fair eating funnel cakes, and this is a sci-fi story. You gotta fix it now. Like there’s no frickin’ funnel cakes in space or something.
– You wrote whole scenes that were pointless and didn’t do anything for the story. That’s why the story ended up being 200,000 words long. But you’re a writer, right? Why are you being punished for writing?!
– You created a gaping plot hole big enough to swallow a bus. Maybe you should just turn this into a story about disappearing busses.
– It becomes plainly obvious you never learned how to spell, use homophones, or apply basic grammar skills. It’s freeform art. These editors are clearly trying to cramp your creativity.

If you write a story, and expect to sell it to people, you might as well do the editing thing. I mean, you’ve been dumb up until this point, why break a streak? And then you know what’s gonna happen? You’re going to have a polished, well-constructed, coherent story with concise writing and no mistakes or typohs. You’re going to learn from all those mistakes you made and not make so many the next time. And you know what that makes you? A better writer. And that means you’re gonna end up writing more stuff. Fool! It’s a vicious cycle!

**Disclaimer: If you haven’t figured it out, these posts are pure satire and simply a humorous way to vent my writing frustrations. No offense is intended to anyone. Please, become or continue being a writer. It’s awesome, I swear. It’s super…duper, awesome…heh heh.

Author: Megan Morgan

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54 thoughts

This is brilliant. ~grin~ Typohs, indeed. I’m learning that after several rewrites my novelette series still has passive voice here and there. At least I’m enjoying time with my beloved characters! Be well.

Vicious is too right! Some people just never learn though, they go round and round and round and edit and edit and edit and end up with a magnificent book and people like it and want more. Totally bonkers! 😉
TashaTasha’s Thinkings – Shapeshifters and Werewolves

Dang it! I really was hoping for funnel cakes in space! What about corn dogs or chili cheese dogs? Okay, well, then I’ll have to settle for chocolate! Love your writing style. Just out of curiosity, how many times did this post go through editing before you were able to post?

I love this theme for the A to Z Challenge! As painful as editing can be, the end result is usually much more beautiful than what you had to start out with. I’ve learned that as much as I hate getting someone else’s opinion, I’m always glad I did!

I’m a really bad girl. LOL I don’t wait for the editor to point out my mistakes, I hunt them down all along. Since I’m a pantser, I don’t know where I’m going until I get there, so I’m constantly revising and editing as I go along. Is there no end to this? And then, the editor wants more changes of course. LOL Still enjoying this. Find me here. LINK

Again, I want to believe this is satire, and here I am agreeing with you. There’s truth in humor, as I always say.

Too bad the world requires me to get it right when I publish. I wish the world was more forgiving. But if I have to be a hard-ass about my work, you damn well know I will be a hard-ass for everyone else.

Editors are a necessary evil. Speaking of which, I’m a content editor. So I too am evil, but necessary.

I absolutely *hate* editing! It’s a good thing I’m so good at spelling, because half the words I type Spell Checker in Word has never heard of, so I have to triple check it to make sure I really did spell it correctly before I click on “Add to Dictionary” so that the next 3,000 times I type that word it will accept it with no problems. As to sentence structure and all that, I couldn’t do that stuff when I was in school, let alone now…If it sounds good, I leave it alone, if it doesn’t I mess with it until it does. 😛